Fragmentation

Fragmentation may be among the most serious charges that can be brought against this text: it doesn't deliver on its points, it doesn't follow out its argumentative leads. It goes all over the place, never stopping to build.

And why is that so bad? Aren't research writings always, in their nature, fragmentary? Science after all (so the Textbooks say) is a reiteration of hypothesis and test. Normal science and paradigm shift. The subject of rational inquiry is never closed.

Right. Except that, formally speaking, the rhetorical structure of every research paper is very carefully closed, summed up, neatly concluded. Call it an irony. There's something about that yawning gulf of uncertainty we call the Real World that makes us rage for order.

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